BT conceived of the study and participated in its design and preparation of the manuscript, JS participated in data collection and analysis, NW participated in data collection and subject recruitment, VN participated in data collection and subject recruitment.
The authors would like to thank Drs Anthonet Koen and Lisa Jose of the Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit Vaccinee Preventable Diseases, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, for assisting in data collection and subject management.
Details on data collection and subjects have been provided previously [ 14].
Details on data collection and subjects have been described previously [ 1].
We approached 471 subjects who participated in the first data collection, and 399 subjects agreed to take part in the second data collection in 2006 833%).
All subjects were familiarised with both the training methods and the measurement protocols before data collection, and all subjects maintained their normal diet and refrained from ingestion of additional vitamin and nutritional supplements throughout the training and testing periods.
We wish to thank Heather Lucas for her help in data collection and the subjects who participated in this project.
The University of North Carolina and the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention had reviewed and approved the procedures for data collection and all subjects and/or their parents/guardians have provided written informed consent.
PD analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript; SB participated in intellectual contributions and manuscript preparation; RD initiated the study, performed study planning, supervised data collection and participated in subject care and manuscript preparation.
The two examiners, blinded from data collection and analysis, scanned subjects with the use of a handheld rolling infrared thermal scanner along the entire spine from S1 to C1.
Specific author contributions: Principal investigator, subject recruitment, subject evaluation, data collection and manuscript preparation: TK; manuscript preparation and statistical analysis: KH: randomization, subject recruitment, subject evaluation and data collection: TT: subject recruitment, subject evaluation and data collection: EU, SN, K N, YK, YY, KI, KK, YA, TI, MM and ST.
